Here is the complete text of this article from page 1 of The Denver Post, April 17, 1912:

MEN ON TITANIC HEROES; DIE CALMLY TO SAVE LOVED ONES

Parting Scenes on Shattered Leviathan Beggar Description–Women and Children Forced to Enter the Lifeboats

New York, April 17.–Nothing could show more plainly the heroism of the crew and the men passengers who stood by the doomed ship Titanic, facing inevitable death, and sent the women and children away in lifeboats, than the fact that four women to every man were saved.

That all women passengers were saved from death when the $10,000,000 floating palace sank was the information received here today. It arrived through the medium of a relayed wireless dispatch received by Mrs. J. W. Bonnell of Youngstown, Ohio, who is at the Waldorf.

Mrs. Bonnell came here to meet relatives who sailed on the Titanic. They included a daughter, a niece and Mr. and Mrs. George D. Wick. The latter two were accompanied by their daughter.

The message which she received was sent from the Carpathia via Cape Race and said:

This story as it originally appeared in The Denver Post, April 17, 1912.

This message confirmed the earlier reports of the heroism of the men passengers of the Titanic, who went to certain death that the women might be saved.

It is now a theory that the men who were also saved cast lots and the winners took their places in the boats until filled.

Some would have to be left–that was a certainty. Hundreds, in fact, were left. But to all appearances the men who were left stayed behind deliberately, calmly, stepping aside to let the weaker ones–those to whom they owed protection–take their way to safety.

Final Message of Brave Men.

“Sinking by the head. Have cleared boats and filled them with women and children.”

This was the final message these brave men sent the world, for it was directly afterward that their wireless signals sputtered–and then stopped altogether.

The picture that inevitably presents itself, in view of what is known, is of men like John Jacob Astor, master of scores of millions; Benjamin Guggenheim of the famous family of bankers; William T. Stead, veteran journalist; Major Archibald W. Butt, soldier; Washington Roebling, noted engineer–of many or all these men–stepping aside bravely, gallantly remaining to die that the place he otherwise might have filled could perhaps be taken by some sabot-shod, shawl-enshrouded, illiterate and penniless peasant woman of Europe.

Thus the stream of woman with toddling infants or babes in arms, perhaps most of them soon to be widowed, filed up from the cabins and over the side and away to life.

They Bravely Remained to Die.

The men–by far the greater part of them–remained to die, millionaire and peasant and man of middle class alike, bravely it must have been, sharing each other’s fate and going down to a common grave.

This story as it originally appeared in The Denver Post, April 17, 1912.

Of the survivors, what? Their story of peril and suffering with the revelation they will furnish of what happened on board the stricken ocean giant–remains to be told.

From what can be learned, many of those who came through the harrowing scenes of the wreck are in a pitiful state. Most of them had retired and were forced to leave the vessel in their night garments. Then for hours they were buffeted about in the sea of ice. Exposed to the icy blasts of the ocean, they drifted in the small lifeboats and saw the great ocean palace, with its wonderful illumination, slowly sink, carrying with it the husbands, fathers, brothers and sweethearts to whom they had said a hasty farewell.

Officials of the White Star line graphically described what happened when the vessel struck the submerged iceberg, from their intimate knowledge of Captain Smith and the man they knew him to be.

When the ship struck, stopped and vibrated with the terrific pounding of her engines–such engines that were powerless in a path obstructed by nature–Captain Smith’s first thought was of the safety of the human lives entrusted to his care. He immediately ordered all hands on deck. That all did not answer the summons; that many of those occupying forward cabins were killed by the impact is regarded as certain.

Moments of Fearful Terror.

Then followed moments of fearful terror–half-clad women and men, too frightened and stunned, probably, to cry out, clinging to each other and shrinking from the spectacle of the towering, specter-like iceberg above them; the gnashing of the detached floes of ice against the sides of the ships; the grinding of the steel prow of the entrapped monster as the reversed engines throbbed frantically to extricate her.

But the crew, if the men performed true to the records which recommended them for service on the new leviathan, alert to the commands of their venerable commander, who stood in his place on the bridge, took of their venerable commander, who stood in his place on the bridge, took their places at the rails to guard against any insane attempts to escape. When it was seen that the vessel might sink, the order came to lower the lifeboats. There was no time to find warm clothes–scarcely time for pitiful farewells.

It was not necessary to invoke the unwritten laws of the sea, of “women first,” if man acted in this crisis as he has done from time immemoriable on land and sea. Women and children were taken from husbands and fathers and placed in the boats and lowered away of the towering sides of the doomed ship into impenetrable darkness, with men enough among them only to man the craft.

Heroic Deeds Never Will Be Known.

What deeds of heroism were enacted in this hour of peril will never be known; some of them will be told when the few eye witnesses are brought home by the Carpathia.

Someone probably will tell of the divine devotion of Mrs. Isidore Straus, who is reported as among the missing. It is also reported that Mr. Straus has perished. As the women were given the first opportunity to leave the ship, and as Mrs. Straus is not among the reported rescued, it is inferred by her friends that she preferred death to parting from her husband. Her age was such that even among the women she would be given choice before the younger ones.

How long the boats drifted in open sea before the Titanic took her fatal plunge cannot be conjectured; indeed, it is not certain that she sank while the crew were yet engaged in lowering the lifeboats.

The mighty plunge came and the horrors of those few brief hours were past for the brave souls aboard–past for the one man who could have fittingly described such a terrible spectacle. That was the venerable William T. Stead, accounted the most famous journalist of the day.

The hours that followed for those tossing about on the swells were hours of intense suffering and anxiety. For hours they strained their eyes for the vessels that they knew had been spoken.

There is but one physician on the Carpathia and women accustomed to the utmost ease and luxury are returning in the steerage scantily clothed, dazed by the ordeal through which they have passed, caring for themselves as best they can.

While lifeboats drifted, the hunt was going on away to the north in the neighborhood of the position first given by the Titanic. Eyes were strained to penetrate the darkness for the fist faint glimmer of the lights on the approaching ship, but it was not until day began to break that the smoke of the tall Carpathia appeared on the horizon. The Virginian of the Allan line was the first to catch the “S. O. S.” of Operator Phillips on the Titanic, but the Carpathia was miles nearer the scene of the disaster when she turned on her course and steamed toward the Titanic’s position. Then came the Parisian, the Virginian, the Baltic and the Olympic.

But all were too late to prevent the appalling wreck. Nature had chosen to mock man’s boasts of conquest and achieved her purpose.

Kristen Iversen is the author of Molly Brown: Unraveling the Myth, winner of the Colorado Book Award for Biography and the Barbara Sudler Award for Nonfiction. Her forthcoming book, Full Body Burden: Growing Up in the Nuclear Shadow of Rocky Flats, will be published in June.

Daniel Allen Butler is the author of nine books and a maritime and military historian. Among his books are "Unsinkable" -- the Full Story of RMS Titanic" and "The Other Side of the Night -- the Carpathia, the Californian, and the Night the Titanic was Lost."

Janet Kalstrom became a docent at the Molly Brown House Museum in Denver after a 37-year banking career. As part of her work as a docent, she dresses in period costume to play Margaret "Molly" Brown at the museum.

As part of the Denver Post's commemoration of the 100th anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic on April 15, 1912, we've invited five experts in some aspect of the tragedy to blog for our website. Their fascination with the topic, in many ways, mirrors the enduring fascination of us all with the story of the giant oceanliner that hit an iceberg in the North Atlantic during its maiden voyage from Southampton to New York City. Over the next month, our bloggers will provide us insights into the ship's history, the cultural context of the times and the passengers, including the indomitable Margaret "Molly" Brown of Denver who was aboard the vessel when it went down. One of our writers will even share her experience of participating in the Titanic Memorial Cruise, which sails in April from Southampton and retraces the route of the Titanic on its fateful voyage.